The impoverished family of Australia’s most famous Aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira, has been given copyright to his works after years of fruitless campaigning triggered the intervention of a philanthropist.

Namatjira’s vibrant water colors are internationally celebrated for the way he captured the hues of the Western Desert in the center of the country.

One of his paintings was given to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 1947 on her 21st birthday, and he met the queen during her 1954 coronation tour in Canberra.

Dick Smith, the Australian businessman whose intervention secured the agreement, told Reuters it was the most satisfying philanthropic thing he had done.

“It’s a just cause,” Smith told Reuters Saturday.

Rights sold, lost

Born in 1902 in Hermannsburg, a remote Aboriginal community in central Australia’s West MacDonnell ranges, Albert Namatjira rose to prominence as the first Aboriginal artist to master a Western tradition.

In 1957, he sold partial copyright for his works to a friend, John Brackenreg.

Two years later, Namatjira died and his will passed the copyright remainder to his widow, Robina, and their children. This gave his family a source of royalty income when reproductions of the images were used.

However, his estate executors gave the administration of his will to the public trustee of the state of the Northern Territory, which sold the copyright to Brackenreg’s company, Legend Press, in 1983 without consulting the family, ABC News reported.

All royalty payments to Namatjira’s descendents ceased, and when Brackenreg died, he passed copyright to his children.

Campaign begins

Eight years ago, arts organization Big hART, began campaigning for the return of the copyright.

They put together a theater show called Namatjira, which toured Australia for three years before traveling to London where in 2013 Queen Elizabeth met two of Namatjira’s grandchildren.

News reports caught the eye of Smith, whose father once worked for Brackenreg. Smith persuaded Brackenreg’s children to give copyright to the Namatjira Legacy Trust, which represents the family, for A$1 on Friday. Smith also donated A$250,000 ($197,200) to the trust.

It is the latest in Smith’s long list of charitable acts, which included contributing to the ransom that freed Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan, taken hostage in Somalia in 2008.

Sophia Marinos, the chair of the Namatjira Legacy Trust, said the money would benefit the whole Aboriginal community with funds for language and cultural programs.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Trump administration Friday demanded that U.S.-made content account for half the value of the cars and trucks sold under the North American Free Trade Agreement, raising further doubts about any potential deal to renew the pact.

Three sources briefed on the protectionist U.S. proposal, which is in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal of shrinking a trade deficit with Mexico and stemming the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, said it also seeks sharply higher North American automotive content overall.

The proposal was made during contentious talks in Washington, in the fourth of seven planned rounds of negotiations to overhaul the treaty. Mexican sources denounced it as absurd and unacceptable, underlining the gaps between NAFTA’s three members as they try to wrap up a deal by a year-end deadline.

Trump, who complains that the original 1994 pact has been a disaster for the United States, is threatening to walk away from the agreement unless major changes are made.

Sour mood, but no quitting

Washington’s auto industry gambit came hot on the heels of its demand that NAFTA also contain a so-called sunset clause.

That could mean any new deal expires in five years, an idea that Canada and Mexico also strongly oppose.

Although sources briefed on the talks describe the mood as sour, Mexican and Canadian politicians say there is no question of leaving the table for now.

A collapse of NAFTA would wreak havoc throughout the North American economy, disrupting highly integrated manufacturing supply chains and agricultural exports with steep tariffs that would snap back into place. Trade among the three countries has more than quadrupled since 1994 to more than $1.2 trillion annually.

One of the sources close to the talks said Washington wants to increase the North American content requirement for trucks, autos and large engines to 85 percent from 62.5 percent over a period of years. That is in addition to its insistence that 50 percent of content be U.S.-made within the first year of a signed deal.

​Proposal seen as unworkable

A Canadian official noted that senior government figures in Ottawa have rejected both ideas as unworkable.

Trump has made clear he prefers bilateral trade deals, and skeptics wonder whether the U.S. demands are part of an “America First” strategy designed to ensure the current talks fail.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has listed the U.S. auto industry demand among a number of “poison pill” proposals that it said would torpedo the talks to renew NAFTA. The chamber says the proposal would cost jobs, because automakers and parts suppliers would likely forgo NAFTA benefits and simply pay the 2.5 percent U.S. tariff for imported cars and many parts.

Unifor, a union that represents most of Canada’s autoworkers, said the U.S. proposals were deliberately untenable. 

“Frankly, I think this is a bully move by the American government,” president Jerry Dias said in a statement.

Trump aides say current rules are too lax and allowed auto companies to bring in too many cheap parts from China and other low-wage Asian countries.

Mexico needs NAFTA

Mexico is heavily dependent on the United States and NAFTA for its economic viability, and uncertainty over the outcome of the talks helped push the Mexican peso to near five-month lows this week.

Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, seeking to downplay any setbacks in the latest round of negotiations, said Friday that tension in the talks was only natural.

Canadian officials also said it was too soon to write off the deal-making process. They noted that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo were to meet in Washington on Tuesday to take stock of the negotiations.

Separately, U.S. negotiators Friday formally asked Canada to address a bilateral dispute over dairy pricing, a request the Canadians are set to resist, sources familiar with the talks said.
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From: MeNeedIt

UNESCO’s executive board voted Friday to make a former French government minister the U.N. cultural agency’s next chief after an unusually heated election that was overshadowed by Middle East tensions.

The board’s selection of Audrey Azoulay over a Qatari candidate came the day after the United States announced that it intends to pull out of UNESCO because of its alleged anti-Israel bias.

The news rocked a weeklong election already marked by geopolitical resentments, concerns about the Paris-based agency’s dwindling funding and questions about its future purpose.

If confirmed by UNESCO’s general assembly next assembly next month, Azoulay will succeed outgoing Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, whose eight-year term was marred by financial woes and criticism over Palestine’s inclusion in 2011 as a member state.

Azoulay narrowly beat Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari in the final 30-28 vote after she won a runoff with a third finalist from Egypt earlier Friday. The outcome was a blow for Arab states that have long wanted to lead the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

UNESCO has had European, Asian, African and American chiefs, but never one from an Arab country.

In brief remarks after she won the election, Azoulay, 45, said the response to UNESCO’s problems should be to reform the agency, not to walk away from it.

“In this moment of crisis, I believe we must invest in UNESCO more than ever, look to support and reinforce it, and to reform it. And not leave it,” she said.

The new director will set priorities for the organization best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions. The agency also works to improve education for girls, promote an understanding of the Holocaust’s horrors, defend media freedom and coordinate science on climate change.

The next leader also will have to contend with the withdrawal of both the U.S. and Israel, which applauded its ally for defending it and said Thursday that it also would be leaving UNESCO.

The election itself had become highly politicized even before the U.S. announced its planned departure.

Azoulay started the week with much less support than Qatar’s al-Kawari but built up backing as other candidates dropped out. She went on to win a runoff with a third finalist, Moushira Khattab of Egypt. Egypt’s foreign ministry has demanded an inquiry into alleged “violations” during the voting.

Jewish groups opposed al-Kawari, citing a preface he wrote to a 2013 Arabic book called “Jerusalem in the Eyes of the Poets” that they claimed was anti-Semitic. He wrote, “We pray to God to liberate (Jerusalem) from captivity and we pray to God to give Muslims the honor of liberating it.”

In March, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote an open letter to German Ambassador Michael Worbs, chair of the UNESCO Executive Board, to criticize the organization for accepting the former Qatari culture minister’s candidacy.

During the months leading up to the election, Egypt and three other Arab nations were engaged in a boycott of Qatar over allegations that the government funds extremists and has overly warm ties to Iran.

French media reported that Qatar recently invited several members of the UNESCO executive board on an all-expenses-paid trip to the country’s capital, Doha.

Azoulay’s late entry into the leadership race in March also annoyed many UNESCO member states that argued that France shouldn’t field a candidate since it hosts the agency. Arab intellectuals urged French President Emmanuel Macron to withdraw his support for her.

She will be UNESCO’s second female chief and its second French chief after Rene Maheu, UNESCO’s director general from 1961-74. While she is Jewish, her father is Moroccan and was an influential adviser to Moroccan kings, so she also has a connection to the Arab world.

The Trump administration had been preparing for a likely withdrawal from UNESCO for months, but the timing of the State Department’s announcement that it would leave at the end of 2018 was unexpected. Along with hostility to Israel, the U.S. cited “the need for fundamental reform in the organization.”

The outgoing Bokova expressed “profound regret” at the U.S. decision and defended UNESCO’s reputation.

The U.S. stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011, but the State Department has maintained a UNESCO office and sought to weigh in on policy behind the scenes. UNESCO says the U.S. now owes about $550 million in back payments.

Azoulay acknowledged the image of the organization — founded after World War II to foster peace, but marred by infighting between Arab member states and Israel and its allies — needed rebuilding.

“The first thing I will do will be to focus on restoring its credibility,” she said.

While UNESCO’s general assembly must sign off month on the executive board’s leadership pick, but officials said the confirmation vote typically is a formality.
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From: MeNeedIt

Disaster-prone countries that keep rebuilding homes, roads and utilities are in danger of becoming uninsurable unless their new infrastructure is built to survive further catastrophe, experts said Friday at a World Bank conference.

New construction must be low in carbon emissions and built on safe land at less risk of destruction as extreme weather intensifies under global warming, they said.

More infrastructure is about to be built in the next 20 years than was built in the past 2,000 years, said experts at the World Bank conference on infrastructure and resilience held in Washington.

The total cost of that infrastructure is seen at some $5 trillion a year.

“The expense of a constant construct, reconstruct, reconstruct, frankly, no country can afford,” said Christiana Figueres, former United Nations’ climate chief.

“Because we know we will be getting more of these effects, we cannot let ourselves get to a scenario where we are systemically uninsurable,” said Figueres.

Among recent disaster losses, no more than half were covered by insurance, she said.

Extreme weather such as flooding, severe storms and drought is increasing with global warming, experts say.

Mapping risky areas and determining the cost of making infrastructure resilient must be done before rebuilding, said Figueres.

She estimated the cost of making low-carbon infrastructure that can withstand shocks might be an additional 10 percent.

Although governments are increasingly aware of the need for resilient infrastructure, residents need incentive and encouragement to rebuild wisely, said Kamal Kishore, member of India’s National Disaster Management Authority.

“If you have a bridge across the River Ganges and you stop it for a day … the economic impact is huge,” he said. “We really have to make the case of life-cycle costs and benefits, not just the upfront costs of infrastructure.”

India has made considerable progress in reducing deaths from cyclones due to a combination of resilient infrastructure, community networks and scientific advances, he said.

Data indicating possible risk must be easily available to ensure infrastructure is not built on land prone to floods or other disasters, said Aris Papadopoulos, former chief executive of cement company Titan America. Papadopoulos recently set up a private-sector risk reduction network with the U.N.’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“We build in vulnerable locations to the same standards as were built in the safer location, and what’s the result? We have disaster,” he said.

Urging a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the Caribbean devastated by recent hurricanes, British businessman Richard Branson said the islands need more hurricane-proof homes and stronger electricity systems.

The original Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar U.S. program that helped rebuild Western European after World War II.

Cutting dependency on costly fossil fuels and switching to solar or wind energy would free up resources for islands that spend as much as a quarter of their national expenditures on fuel, said Branson.

Branson is trying to set up a fund to help Caribbean nations replace fossil fuel-dependent utilities with low-carbon renewable energy sources.

“How much more destruction is needed to show that the way we treat our planet is having serious consequences and sadly will have even more serious consequences?” he asked.
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From: MeNeedIt

Bigger and more powerful flying drones are slowly entering everyday life. At this year’s international technology show in Dubai, a number of drone manufacturers displayed machines that could substantially increase the mobility of various public services, from police and firefighters to taxis. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

It covers almost three-fourths of the planet, but it’s probably not a good idea to fill your cup from a river. Drinkable water flows to most of our taps only after it gets a good scrubbing. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a drinking water treatment plant in the Washington metropolitan area.
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From: MeNeedIt

Following the U.S. decision Thursday to quit the United Nations organization for education, science and culture, Israel announced it too will withdraw. The United States stopped funding UNESCO after the Palestinian Authority was accepted into the agency as a full member. As a member subject to membership dues, the United States accumulated a $600 million debt over the years. But as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, the Trump administration also cited anti-Israel bias as a reason for withdrawal.
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From: MeNeedIt

The European Union’s Brexit negotiator said Thursday that that little progress was made with the U.K. in a fifth round of talks on the country’s departure from the EU in 2019, and that he cannot yet recommend broadening negotiations to include trade.

Michel Barnier said that despite the “constructive spirit” shown in this week’s negotiations in Brussels, “we haven’t made any great steps forward.” On the question of how much Britain has to pay to settle its financial commitments, he said: “We have reached a state of deadlock, which is disturbing.”

Barnier said he would not be able to recommend to EU leaders meeting next week that “sufficient progress” has been made to broaden the talks to future EU-British relations like trade.

The leaders meet in Brussels on Oct. 19-20, and it had been hoped they would agree to widen the talks.

The EU says this can only happen when there has been progress on the issues of the financial settlement, the rights of citizens affected by Brexit and the status of the Northern Ireland-Ireland border.

But Britain says these issues are closely intertwined with their future relations like trade and must be discussed together.

“I hope the member states will see the progress we have made and take a step forward” next week, British Brexit envoy David Davis told reporters.

“We would like them to give Michel the means to broaden the negotiations. It’s up to them whether they do it. Clearly I think it’s in the interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union that they do,” Davis said.

Barnier said the two sides would work to achieve “sufficient progress” in time for a subsequent meeting of EU leaders in December.

Britain must leave the EU on March 29, 2019, but the negotiations must be completed within about a year to leave time for EU states’ national parliaments to ratify the Brexit agreement.

Barnier reaffirmed that parting with “no deal will be a very bad deal.”

“To be clear, on our side, we will be ready to face any eventualities, and all the eventualities,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Frustrated by failures in Congress, President Donald Trump will try to put his own stamp on health care with an executive order Thursday that aims to make lower-premium plans more widely available.

But the president’s move is likely to encounter opposition from medical associations, consumer groups and perhaps even some insurers — the same coalition that so far has blocked congressional Republicans from repealing and replacing former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Critics say the White House approach would raise costs for the sick and the lower-premium coverage provided to healthy people would come with significant gaps.

Administration officials say one of the main ideas is to ease the way for groups and associations to sponsor coverage that can be marketed across the land, reflecting Trump’s longstanding belief that interstate competition will lead to lower premiums for consumers who buy their own health insurance policies, as well as for small businesses.

Less cost, but less coverage

Those “association health plans” could be shielded from state and federal requirements such as mandates for coverage of certain standard benefits, equal pricing regardless of a customer’s health status, and no dollar limits on how much the insurer would pay out.

Other elements of the White House proposal may include:

Easing current restrictions on short-term policies that last less than a year, an option for people making a life transition, from recent college graduates to early retirees.
Allowing employers to set aside pre-tax dollars so workers can use the money to buy an individual health policy.

No impact on 2018

Democrats are bracing for another effort by Trump to dismantle Obamacare, this time relying on the rule-making powers of the executive branch. Staffers at the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have been working on the options since shortly after the president took office.

But as Trump himself once said, health care is complicated and working his will won’t be as easy as signing a presidential order. Some parts of the plan will have to go through the agency rule-making process, which involves notice and comment, and can take months. State attorneys general and state insurance regulators may try to block the White House in court, seeing the plan as a challenge to their traditional authority.

Experts say Trump’s plan probably wouldn’t have much impact on premiums for 2018, which are expected to be sharply higher in many states for people buying their own policies.

Sponsors would have to be found to offer and market the new style association plans, and insurers would have to step up to design and administer them. For insurers, this would come at a time when much of the industry seems to have embraced the consumer protections required by the Obama health law.

​Markets less viable

Depending on the scope of the order, some experts say the new plans created by the White House would draw healthy people away from Obamacare insurance markets, making them less viable for consumers and insurers alike. This could start happening as early as 2019. Premiums for those in the health law’s markets would keep rising, and so would taxpayer costs for subsidizing coverage.

“If the order is as expansive as it sounds, association plans could create insurance products that would siphon off healthy people with lower premiums and skinnier benefits, leading more insurers to exit the ACA marketplace or raise premiums significantly,” Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said recently.

“Healthy middle-class people not now eligible for subsidies could get cheaper insurance, but people with pre-existing conditions could be priced out of the market altogether,” he added.

Nonetheless conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe the federal government has overstepped its bounds in regulating the private health insurance market. They argue that loosening federal rules would allow insurers to design plans that, although they may not cover as much, work perfectly well for many people.

17 million buy policies

About 17 million people now buy individual health insurance policies.

Nearly 9 million consumers receive tax credits under the Affordable Care Act and are protected from higher premiums.

But those who get no subsidies are exposed to the full brunt of cost increases that could reach well into the double digits in many states next year.

Many in this latter group are solid middle-class, including self-employed business people and early retirees. Cutting their premiums has been a longstanding political promise for Republicans.
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From: MeNeedIt

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo sought at least $1 billion in damages and a public apology from Uber Technologies Inc as conditions for settling its high-profile trade secret lawsuit against the ride-services company, sources familiar with the proposal told Reuters.

The Waymo self-driving car unit also asked that an independent monitor be appointed to ensure Uber does not use Waymo technology in the future, the sources said.

Uber rejected those terms, said the sources, who were not authorized to publicly discuss settlement talks.

The precise dollar amount requested by Waymo and the exact time the offer was made could not be learned.

Waymo’s tough negotiating stance reflects the company’s confidence in its legal position after months of pretrial victories in a case that may help to determine who emerges in the forefront of the fast-growing field of self-driving cars.

The aggressive settlement demands also suggest that Waymo is not in a hurry to resolve the lawsuit, in part because of its value as a distraction for Uber leadership, said Elizabeth Rowe, a trade secret expert at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Waymo recently persuaded a San Francisco federal judge to delay a trial to decide the dispute from October to early December, citing the need to investigate evidence Uber had not disclosed earlier.

No further settlement talks are scheduled, the sources said. The judge overseeing the case mandated that the companies enter mediation with a court-appointed magistrate.

Amy Candido, a Waymo attorney, declined to comment on any settlement talks, but said the company’s reasons for suing Uber are “pretty clear.”

“Waymo had one goal: to stop Uber from using its trade secrets,” she said. “That remains its goal.”

An Uber spokesperson declined to comment.

Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that former engineer Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving to set up a self-driving truck company, called Otto, which Uber acquired soon after.

Uber denied using any of Waymo’s trade secrets.
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From: MeNeedIt

In his new autobiography, retired astronaut Scott Kelly gives an unflinchingly blunt take on his U.S. record-breaking year in space and the challenging life events that got him there.

This isn’t your usual astronaut’s memoir.

Kelly recounts dumpster diving on the International Space Station for discarded meals after a supply capsule was destroyed and ending up with “some dude’s used underwear” in his hands. He writes about the congestion, headaches and burning eyes he endured from high carbon dioxide levels and the feeling no one cared at Mission Control in Houston.

In his book, Kelly tells how prostate cancer surgery almost got him banned from space station duty, and how his vision problem during an earlier spaceflight almost cost him the one-year mission, which spanned from March 2015 to March 2016.

He tells how he visited a tattoo parlor before launch and got black dots all over his body to make it easier to take ultrasound tests in orbit, and how he fashioned extra vomit bags for a nauseated crewmate.

Making story ‘more believable’

Kelly said his goal in writing Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery was to tell the whole story.

So many other NASA astronauts’ memoirs “focus on the good stuff and not necessarily the personal things that happened in their lives, things they might not be proud of, things that we all have that makes us normal, relatable people,” he told The Associated Press. “So I felt like sharing is good, but … the bad stuff, too, makes the story more believable.”

In the book, he writes about a little-known incident that he says occurred during his first space station stint in 2010, when a Russian cosmonaut came untethered during a spacewalk and began floating away. Luckily, Oleg Skripochka happened to hit an antenna that bounced him back toward the space station, enabling him to grab on and save his life, according to Kelly.

Kelly said that even though he was aboard the space station at the time, he didn’t learn about the incident until his yearlong mission five years later, when it casually came up in conversation with other cosmonauts. “I was, like, really? Holy crap. Crazy,” Kelly recalled in an AP interview.

He remembered Skripochka had looked shaken, but thought it was because he had been out on his first spacewalk.

No confirmation

On Wednesday, the Russian Space Agency’s press department said it contacted Skripochka, who did not confirm Kelly’s account. No other comment was provided.

“I’ve often pondered what we would have done if we’d known he was drifting irretrievably away from the station,” Kelly writes. “It probably would have been possible to tie his family into the comm system in his spacesuit so they could say goodbye before the rising CO2 or oxygen deprivation caused him to lose consciousness — not something I wanted to spend a lot of time thinking about as my own spacewalk was approaching.”

Published by Knopf, Endurance comes out next Tuesday. So does a version for children, My Journey to the Stars, put out by Penguin Random House.

Kelly, 53, said he didn’t discover his passion for aviation and space until reading Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book The Right Stuff in college. Kelly writes that he was a terrible student and most likely suffered from attention deficit disorder.

The former spaceman also tells how he realized right before his wedding that he didn’t want to go through with it, but did anyway, leading to a troubled marriage and eventually divorce, and how he initially didn’t want “that space station stink” on him — getting space station assignments — for fear it would limit his shuttle-flying opportunities. He flew twice on space shuttles and had two extended stays at the space station, sharing the entire 340-day mission, his last, with Russian Mikhail Kornienko.

A ‘below-average guy’

When asked whether it was difficult exposing his weaknesses when astronauts are supposed to be perfect or close to it, Kelly replied, “Naw, I feel like I’m like a below-average guy doing slightly above-average stuff.”

Kelly figured he might write a book, given it was NASA’s longest single spaceflight ever. So he kept a journal in orbit and took notes about how the place looked, smelled and felt “to make someone feel like they were on the space station.”

“The book hasn’t come out yet,” Kelly said, “and as I get closer to it coming out, I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to live with this for the rest of my life.’ ”

Kelly’s identical twin brother, Mark, also a former Navy pilot and NASA astronaut as well as an author, was among the several people who read early drafts. Scott Kelly devotes several pages to the 2011 shooting of his sister-in-law, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Aboard the space station at the time, Kelly wondered whether he was calling his family too much — “whether in my effort to be there for them I was becoming intrusive.”

Back on Earth and now retired for 1½ years, Kelly said he misses being in space. Of course, when he was in space, he missed Earth. He credits that saying to a Russian crewmate, Gennady Padalka, the world’s most experienced spaceman, and isn’t sure the saying made it into the book.

“I need to write a sequel of all the stuff I left out.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The sexual harassment scandal surrounding one of Hollywood’s most powerful movie producers deepened this week as a report published in The New Yorker magazine accused Harvey Weinstein of raping three women. VOA’S Jeff Custer reports from Washington
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From: MeNeedIt